This copy of De secretis mulierum preserves rare and revealing evidence of early sixteenth-century use. Its contemporary marginal annotations transform the book from a theoretical treatise into a working text. The annotator, rather than dwelling on the astrological framework that modern scholars often emphasize, the annotator extracts medical mechanisms: retention of the menses, uterine heat and cold, fetal weakness, obstructed labor, and death in utero. The margins record causes, outcomes, and even brief case-like notations, suggesting that the reader approached the text as a practical guide to reproduction rather than as a cosmological speculation.
In this witness, the heavens recede and the womb comes forward. The annotations show an early reader operationalizing the book’s natural philosophy — isolating physiological explanations, indexing pathological conditions, and treating the treatise as applied reproductive knowledge. As material evidence of use, this copy allows us to glimpse how a learned reader around 1508–1520’s engaged with “women’s secrets”: not as mystical doctrine, but as embodied biology.
958J pseudo Albertus Magnus, Henricus, de Saxonia; Lucas Panaetius
De secretis mulierum cum comme[n]to. Novissime: infinitis pene erroribus emendatus.
[Venetiis], [Petri Bergomatis solertia impressioni datus est], 1508 Price: $ 4,500
Quarto: 20 x 15 cm, 56 unnumbered leaves Signatures: A-G⁸. Edited by Lucas Panaetius, Olchinensis (canon of Ulcinj) (fl 1501-1518), with commentary by Henricus de Saxonia (fl 13th century). The corner of E8 torn off with part of 16 lines in second column in a very good facsimile[ See the images below ] A few notes in contemporary hand. Bound in Modern quarter pigskin over marble boards by Dragonfly bindery. With numerous contemporary annotations
“One of the most influential documents in the history of medieval scientific attitudes toward women”
Described as “one of the most influential documents in the history of medieval scientific attitudes toward women,” De secretis mulierum stands at the intersection of scholastic natural philosophy, clerical pedagogy, and the construction of gendered bodies in medieval thought. Traditionally attributed to Albertus Magnus, the text is now generally understood—following the work of Lynn Thorndike and others—to be a late-thirteenth- or early-fourteenth-century compilation, likely by a disciple such as Henricus de Saxonia.
The treatise synthesizes Hippocratic, Galenic, and Aristotelian theories of generation into thirteen compact chapters addressing conception, embryology, menstruation, obstetrics, planetary influence, sexual differentiation, and the formation of “monsters.” It circulated widely in manuscript before entering print in 1481; at least twenty incunable and early sixteenth-century editions followed. Survival rates suggest heavy use: institutional holdings are disproportionately concentrated in medical libraries such as the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the National Library of Medicine, with comparatively few copies elsewhere in the United States.
Although De secretis mulierum is often described as an astrological treatise disguised as gynecology, this copy reveals a different mode of reading. Its early marginalia extract medical mechanisms—retention of menses, uterine heat, fetal obstruction, mortality—while ignoring the celestial framework. The annotator’s attention falls not on the stars but on the womb. In this witness, the text functions less as cosmology and more as practical reproductive natural philosophy.
The authority of the text derives in part from its pseudo-Albertine attribution. By invoking Albertus, the work situates itself within the highest scholastic tradition of Aristotelian natural philosophy, distinguishing itself from vernacular “books of secrets.” At the same time, modern scholarship has emphasized its role in shaping late-medieval and early-modern conceptions of female physiology—particularly notions of menstrual toxicity, sexual imbalance, and bodily instability. These ideas formed part of the intellectual substrate later visible in demonological literature, including the Malleus Maleficarum.
The 1508 Venetian edition, edited by Lucas Panaetius Olchinensis, likely reflects the same philological method he later articulated in the preface to his 1511 edition of Caesar: correction of accumulated errors in earlier printed exemplars in pursuit of restoring the text’s “original brilliance” (pristinum candorem), thereby stabilizing in print a previously fluid scholastic tradition. Lucas Panaetius Olchinensis (fl. 1501–1518), canon of Ulcinj and doctor of arts and law, was an Adriatic humanist active in Venice who edited scholastic, classical, and humanist works. He first appears in 1501 editing De secretis mulierum, returned to the text in a revised 1508 edition, prepared an emended edition of Caesar in 1511, and in 1518 oversaw a corrected Venetian edition of Ficino’s De triplici vita. Across these works he consistently claimed restoration of textual purity through correction of earlier printed exemplars, exemplifying Renaissance philological intervention at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology.
Lynn Thorndike explored the attribution of this work to Albertus Magnus, and concludes that De Secretis and was probably composed by one of his followers during the late 13th or early 14th century. The text is interspersed with commentary also by unknown authorship, there extists two states of commentary and this is known as commentator ‘A’ . It is curious and determinative that the authors all refer to Albertus Magnus in the third person. (studies by Wickersheimer, 1923, Ferckel, 1954 and Thorndike, 1955).
This text might establish itself as scientific and philosophical treatis by the pseudo attribution to Albertus, in order to segregate itself from orther genera of ‘secret’ texts, including myth, folk lore, magic et c.
This text consists of 13 chapters;
On the Generation of the Embryo
On the Formation of the Fetus
Concerning the Influence of the Planets
On the Generation of Imperfect Animals
On the Exit of the Fetus from the Uterus
Concerning Monsters in Nature
On the Signs of Conception
On the Signs of Whether a Male or Female is in the Uterus
On the Signs of Corruption of Virginity
On the Signs of Chastity
Concerning a Defect of the Womb
Concerning Impediments to Conception
On the Generation of the Sperm
As our pseudo author of Albertus Magnus, the treatises’s “believed that the study of nature as perceived through sense experience and then analyzed in a rational manner forms a single discipline through which we come to comprehend the universe in its corporeal aspects. Human reproduction, a main subject of this treatise, is one of these aspects, that nevertheless has repercussions for our understanding of the entire cosmos” (Lemay, p. 3).
To speculate upon the community of reader addressed or the actual rader of this text has come to a point of controversy recently, Thondike suggests this was a text sort of book, while De Secretis was most likely “designed to be used within a religious community as a vehicle for instructing priests in natural philosophy, particularly as it pertains to human generation.”
“A strong subtext of the Secrets, however, is the evil nature of women and the harm they can cause to their innocent victims: young children and their male consorts. Clearly then, another purpose of this treatise is to malign the female sex, a tradition that extends back in Christianity to second-century misogynist writings” (Lemay, p. 16). Among the concepts that the text popularised were the idea that women’s menstrual blood was poisonous, that post-menopausal women (especially those who were poor) were more “venomous” because they could no longer expel the toxins, and that women were inherently lascivious beings with a physiological need to absorb the heat and life force of men. “It is these misogynistic ideas about women’s sexuality that seeded their demonization in the years that followed, as the Secrets served as a direct source for the Malleus Maleficarum. Indeed, the most famous statement from the Malleus explicitly connects witchery with ideas about women’s sexuality rooted in the medieval period: ‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable’”
(McLemore, “Medieval Sexuality, Medical Misogyny, and the Makings of the Modern Witch”, blog of the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Studies Institute, October 30, 2020). Cantamessa 98; Durling 97; Thorndike II, 739; missing from Adams, Caillet, and Duveen (who cite other editions), Osler, and Wellcome. (Women’s Secrets A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries By Helen Rodnite Lemay)
Receive, most beloved reader, this little book of the blessed Albert, On the Secrets of Women —a work indeed useful and most necessary for human life, in which so great a philosopher seems to discuss not only physical matters but even things transcending nature.
Since formerly, through the negligence of booksellers, it had come forth into the light so mutilated and corrupted that no part, no little line, not even a single syllable could be found without error —now, however, through the skill of Pietro of Bergamo, who submitted it for careful correction to a truly learned man of Lucca, it has been made so clear and lucid; and, with every error removed from the impression, it has been published in such a way that what previously seemed to speak in Chaldean, Arabic, and Hebrew may now be understood and explained even by the most inexperienced student of printing.
Venice, the xvii. day of October, Mcccccviii.
Jamesgray2@me.com
For university and special collections purchases, I am accustomed to working within committee timelines and budget cycles. Titles may be placed on hold during review, and flexible invoicing arrangements can be discussed where appropriate. I welcome inquiries at jamesgray2@me.com.
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